Stained
by i AM the Random Idiot
Summary: AU. It’s black on white on black — bleached-blank memories and red-stained hunger. A coup d’état leads to a new twist in this tale: his story from the dark side of the moon. –post episode 124– ::What would happen if Ichigo's Hollow side won?::
1. Prologue: Cigar Blues Breakdown

**Stained**

AU. It's black on white on black—bleached-blank memories and red-stained hunger. A coup d'état leads to a new twist in this tale: his story from the dark side of the moon. –post episode 124–

(a/n) Portions of this idea actually occurred to me on my first time going through the series. I promptly forgot about most of them after the conclusion of the Arrancar arc, but was reminded of them recently during a phone conversation, and—wham! My fickle AU muse, whom I'd been trying to lure out to help me with a major endeavor in the KH section, turned up with the Godly Hammer of Inspiration, and I had no chance. Curse my muses. **More coherent summary at the end of the next chapter. You wouldn't want me to ruin it, would you?**

(ships) I'm not telling you; the romances do not make the story, and aren't even important, and I haven't really decided yet. Any eventual pairings that do occur, if any do, will be clean (no graphic sex scenes, heck, probably no sex scenes at all), and they will be het. That's a promise.

(disclaimer) _Bleach_ belongs to Tite Kubo, TV Tokyo, Pierrot, Viz Media, and Shounen Jump. If I forgot anyone, too bad.

* * *

**Prologue: Cigar Blues Breakdown**

"The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears."  
-- Francis Bacon, Sr.

Kurosaki Isshin laid the remnants of his last pack of cigarettes out on the kitchen table. He hadn't bought another pack since he quit smoking eleven or twelve years ago, and his habit of smoking only once a year, on the anniversary of Masaki's death, was slowly but surely whittling his supply down. Isshin looked at the cigarettes, rolling them around on the tabletop with his finger. For some reason, he felt ill at ease tonight, and craved a smoke more strongly than he had in years.

"_Ichi_," he began to count, gently prodding each one as he spoke, "_ni, san_…" He lingered over the last one.

"_Shi_."

--

Inoue Orihime slept easily. A single candle, left alight at the small shrine left to her brother, flickered in a slight draft.

A final gust came, and blew it out completely.

--

Yasutora Sado, known to his friends as Chad, slept a bit more restlessly. More than once, he woke up, breathing hard, but unable to remember what he'd dreamed to cause it. He would then rub the coin his grandfather gave him, and, troubled, roll over to go back to sleep.

--

Ishida Uryū was drifting up from unconsciousness, having three hours earlier been blasted with a spirit arrow nineteen millimeters to the right of his heart. As his spiritual awareness expanded exponentially with the return of his Quincy power, he almost caught a trace of something huge, something dramatic flickering right at the edge of his senses. He had become so sensitized, however, that the rush of stimulation from all sides soon drowned out the almost-memory, as he drifted back into something more like proper sleep.

--

Kuchiki Rukia sat on the roof of the Kurosaki Clinic, a gentle wind stirring her hair. She gazed up at the star-filled sky.

"There's no moon tonight," she whispered.

--

Isshin considered the cigarettes on the table for another minutes, and then shook his head. He wouldn't break his habit just for one weak night, he told himself.

A knock at the door startled him. He glanced at the digital clock above the oven, just to reassure himself of how late it was. _1:39_. The knock sounded again, and Isshin got up to answer it.

_Odd_, he thought, _usually Ichigo just walks in._

It wasn't Ichigo.

Urahara Kisuke stood in the doorway, striped hat, _geta_ sandals and all.

"Hello," Isshin said, frowning.

Kisuke flipped open that stupid fan he had, covering up most of the last visible portion of his face. "I'm sorry for the late hour, Kurosaki-_san_."

"That's all right; I was awake," Isshin replied, looking the shifty merchant over suspiciously. Ignoring for the moment how late it was, there was something off about their meeting. Kisuke _never_ came to their house directly, if only to keep Ichigo in the dark about his connection with Isshin himself. Isshin had wondered if the man even knew where they lived. "Would you…like to come in?" he asked, stifling a yawn halfway through the sentence.

"No, that's all right," Kisuke said, closing his fan and pocketing it.

Isshin waited for him to elaborate, but Kisuke simply stood there, as if not knowing how to begin. His hat cast shadows over his face in the porch lights, rendering his eyes invisible. Slightly irritated, Isshin asked, "So…what are you here for?"

"It's…" Kisuke began, letting the word hang as he seemed to grope for words. He put a hand to his hat. "It's about your son."

A cold sensation trickled down his back. Isshin stared at Kisuke, trying to read his face. It was like trying to read a rock. "What about him?"

Kisuke's right hand tightened its grip on his hat. Slowly, he pulled it from his head, down his face, down to his chest, to rest over his heart. He said four words:

"_Your son…is gone."_

The world stopped for a full minute.

Isshin did not move, did not even blink.

"Gone," he repeated, barely above a whisper, the word not a question but merely a statement made in the hopes of it being corrected and proven false.

Kisuke's face itself betrayed no emotion, but his eyes, his haunted eyes, spoke volumes. One look, and Isshin knew.

"I'm so…" Kisuke blurted, and Isshin slammed the door in his face.

He walked back to the kitchen in a half-daze, stumbling a bit. His eyes fell on the handful of cigarettes on the table, and he snatched them up.

He put all four cigarettes in his mouth, and he lit every single damn one.

(a/n) …Stay tuned, review, and don't take any wooden nickels.


	2. Requiem for a Death God

**Stained**

AU. It's black on white on black—bleached-blank memories and red-stained hunger. A coup d'état leads to a new twist in this tale: his story from the dark side of the moon. –post episode 124–

(a/n) So yeah, giant AU. God, I hate summarizing. I also hate Ishida's first name, so I avoid using it on principle. Too bad. And before I get wanked at about basic facts, if you know Ichigo's birthday (July 15) and do the math, he's sixteen by the time they got out of the SS Arc. Actually, he's sixteen before it even starts (they leave Aug. 1).

* * *

**Chapter 1:  
****Requiem for a Death God**

"And the woman said unto the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:  
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."'  
And the serpent said unto the woman, 'Ye shall not surely die:  
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.'"  
-- Genesis 3:2-5

_Ichigo Kurosaki._

_Age: 16._

_High school student._

_Died in a car accident around midnight on September 9__th__._

That was the gist of the obituary. Ichigo's body was found on the roadside, the official report read. He had apparently been struck by a car, the car long gone, of course, and he was dead when they found him. At least, that's what everyone was told.

Ishida Uryū didn't believe a word of it. There was just no way. No _way_. Ichigo could probably be run over by _six_ cars and emerge relatively unscathed; that was the extent of the somehow perfectly invincible persona that had built up around him, even in Ishida's rather uncomplimentary opinion of the guy.

They were at Ichigo's house. The viewing was being held there—closed casket—and much of the school had turned up, including even some teachers—Miss Ochi, for example, stood off to Ishida's left, sobbing into the sleeve of Vice Principal Kagine, who looked a little misty-eyed himself.

Ichigo's sisters were nowhere to be seen. It was only eight-thirty, but it seemed that they'd already gone to bed. Ishida felt badly for them; he remembered his reaction as a child at his grandfather's funeral. Shaking his head, he pushed the memories away—_why think about them?_ he asked himself.

Because he still didn't believe Ichigo was really dead.

He hadn't seen any of the Soul Reapers—Rukia included—since before receiving the news. He knew that if Ichigo had died, he would have had to have been sent on to the Soul Society by one of them. Their suspicious absence and lack of communication led Ishida to believe that something more was going on.

Still…

Still, Ishida could not sense Ichigo's _reiatsu_ anywhere. And that was something to say, considering he'd had his Quincy powers back for less than twenty-four hours, and was still sensitive enough to count the _reishi_ floating on the tip of his thumb (345,268,900 before he'd quit). Or when you considered that we're talking about _Ichigo_ here, the resident spiritual nuclear reactor of Karakura. Ishida may not have believed that Ichigo was dead, but he could vouch for the fact that he was _certainly not anywhere close to here_.

Ichigo's father was standing apart, subdued and speaking only when offered condolences. It added almost another layer of surrealism to the whole scene—to see Ichigo's father looking so quiet, and alone, and…_fragile_ was like seeing, well, like seeing Ishida's own father dye his hair pink and go skateboarding in the park. It _just didn't happen_.

Ishida saw Asano Keigo and Kojima Mizuiro by the far wall. Keigo was sitting against the wall with his arms wrapped around his legs and his face buried in his knees. Mizuiro was sitting next to him, apparently patting his back and trying to comfort him. For once, the meaningless, slightly sociopathic smile that Mizuiro usually wore in public was gone, replaced by an expression of genuine sympathy and faint confusion, as if he wasn't quite sure what face to make. Ishida had never really liked those two, but he knew that Ichigo considered them good friends, and it saddened him a bit to realize that they would never know about their friend's struggle for the past three and a half months. An entire portion of his life would always have been kept from them and—_no, no, stop thinking about it as if he's dead, Uryū, he's not, he's not, it's never happening._

Orihime and Chad were a little ways away. Orihime's face was streaked with tears, and Chad looked shaken and pale. Ishida wanted to get them alone so that he could explain his suspicions about Ichigo's supposed "death," but it was much too crowded for him to work up a suitable pretext. They couldn't very well all squeeze into the bathroom, after all. He caught Orihime's eye and tried to offer an encouraging, sympathetic, but respectfully subdued smile. It probably looked like he was trying to pass gas, and she turned away without smiling back. Ishida sighed internally.

Orihime suddenly stiffened. Ishida wanted to ask her what was wrong, but she was already gone, running up to someone she saw in the crowd, and—_and punching him across the face?_ "Inoue!" Chad gasped, but was drowned out by Orihime screaming,

"_YOU BASTARD!_" She had tackled someone—Ishida couldn't see who, but he caught a glimpse of blond hair—to the ground, and was, pardon the colloquialism, beating the living shit out of him. Conversations ceased and people screamed, whirling to try to see what was going on.

"Inoue-_san_!" Ishida shouted, fighting the newly forming crowd to get to Orihime. He could now see the person that Orihime was beating up—it was that odd exchange student, Hirako Shinji.

Strangely enough, Shinji didn't even seem to be fighting back with any effort, just defending himself from facial blows with his hands. Orihime knelt on his stomach and whaled on him, striking him anywhere she could reach—face, chest, and arms—sobbing and babbling a string of almost incoherent sentences. _"It was you!"_ she screamed, as several people at a time tried to pry her off Shinji. _"It was you, I know it was you, you bastard, you wanted him for something and it's your fault, I know it, it's your fault he's __**dead**__! You killed him, you people, you killed him he's gone he's dead you killed him you bastards all of you how __**dare**__ you show your face here MURDERER!_" It finally took both Chad and Ishida's combined efforts to pull her off him.

Shinji unsteadily rose, wiping blood out of the corner of his mouth where a particularly strong blow had split his lip on his enormous teeth. Bruises were rising already, and his left eye was almost certainly going to be a shiner in the morning, but he only said, "Nice right hook."

Orihime panted, gasping for breath. "You…" she wheezed, "you…your fault…" Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides, where Chad had her pinned. Tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks. "…_Do—doshite_?" she whispered, her voice breaking. _Why?_

It didn't make sense. Shinji? Ishida had never really made a connection between him and Ichigo—they sat next to each other, but never seemed to interact. Granted, that was during the time that Ishida had been busy agonizing over the choice his father had given him—give up interacting with the Soul Reapers, or never get your Quincy powers back—so it was entirely possible he had missed something going on between them.

And why had Orihime said, _you __people__?_

Murmurs chased each other through the milling crowd of people. Ishida spoke up, saying, "Inoue-_san_ is confused, Hirako-_kun_. What with the stress, and the tragedy…Accept my apologies on her behalf."

Orihime looked up at him with a tear-filled and betrayed expression, making Ishida feel oddly guilty, as if he had somehow let her down. However, she noticed the staring people around her, finally, and flushed. "_Gomen nasai_," she said to Shinji in a colorless tone. _Forgive me_.

Shinji picked up his hat from the floor, dusting it off. "Accepted," he said, a faint shadow of his trademark face-splitting grin flickering across his face. People had stopped listening in, content that the conflict was resolved and they'd have a story to tell the next day. Shinji's eyes flicked around the room, ensuring that no one was taking any undue interest, and he leaned in close to the three of them.

"If you want to know the truth," he said, "bring your _shinigami_ friends and meet me across town in a few hours."

Orihime's eyes widened, and Ishida squeezed her arm, hard. _Don't draw more attention here_, he silently begged. She looked at him, saw him shake his head, and subsided.

"The truth?" Chad murmured, careful not to speak above the noise level of the crowd.

"You don't really believe this crap, do you?" Shinji said, jerking his head to indicate the whole room.

"No, but what makes you think we believe _you_, anyway? What do you have to do with this?" Ishida asked, but Orihime waved him off.

"Believe him," she whispered, eyes glimmering and teeth gritted. "He probably had a hand in it." Ishida glanced over in shock, to meet Chad's gaze. Chad nodded at him, making Ishida even more chagrined that he had apparently missed something huge.

Shinji shrugged, somehow making it look totally natural and casual to any curious observer from afar, though his expression revealed his true tension. "That depends. I'll be alone, in the abandoned warehouse on Seventh Street. I shouldn't be doing this, really. But you deserve to know." He glanced around again, and began to walk away.

At the last second, however, he turned back, and said, in a voice that was quiet, yet somehow carried:

"_Only come if you think you can handle it."_

With that, he walked out.

Orihime trembled, hands clenched. Chad's eyes narrowed. The sentence seemed to burn in the air that Shinji had left behind.

And over by the wall, Isshin watched the three of them from afar, saying nothing.

xxx

"Here," Rukia said. "His _reiatsu_ disappears…here." She brushed her hand across an expanse of asphalt before the warehouse to which Ishida had brought them. About halfway there, they had converged with Ichigo's already dim and fading trail of residual spirit energy, indicating he had come this way in the past thirty-six hours. Rukia was in parts relieved and worried to feel it here—relieved because being able to sense Ichigo's familiar spirit energy (and by the purpose of their rendezvous, harbor a faint hope of his being alive and okay) loosened up the knot in her chest and made the past day seem a bit less surreal, and worried because they were coming upon what must have been the last place Ichigo had been before he…before whatever happened to him had happened, and perhaps Shinji's truth would be worse than the apparent fiction they had been told.

Abarai Renji squeezed her other hand for moral support, giving her a faint smile, and she paused to be glad that he was here with her. She and he were the only ones that Orihime, Chad, and Ishida had told about the meeting—_tell the others if you want_, they had said, _but we know that you two were his best Soul Reaper friends, so if any of you come, it has to be you two_. Rukia and Renji had considered telling the others, but knew that it might just make things worse to show up all six of them strong, given Shinji's apparent attitude about _shinigami_. So they told Captain Hitsugaya that they were following a lead, and would report back in at the end of the day with what they found out. Hitsugaya agreed, being that it gave him the opportunity to figure out how exactly he was going to report this to Captain-General Yamamoto and enabled the other three to do their own investigating. Perhaps he would have pulled Rangiku and sent her too, had he known the exact nature of their "lead," but what was done was done.

"There's something like a barrier here," Orihime said, gesturing over where Rukia had indicated. "I can sense its remnants—it was something like my Santen Kesshun. It blocked off the rest of Ichigo's spirit energy. It's fading now, but still…still blocking us."

"Can you break it?" Chad asked. "Since it's something like what you can do?"

Orihime frowned, pressing her hand to something the rest of them could not see. "I can make a hole in it," she said finally. "I think breaking it entirely would be a bad idea."

Rukia stood up straight. "Then, everyone…" She nodded to them all. "Let's go."

When they crossed the threshold created by the barrier, Rukia sensed it immediately. From the look Renji gave her, and the way Ishida, Inoue, and Chad flinched up ahead, she knew they sensed it, too.

Like hot ashes and soot at the scene of a bomb blast, layered over everything in the path of the explosion, Ichigo's _reiatsu_ was _**everywhere**_.

"My God," Ishida whispered, visibly shaking. "What _happened_?" Rukia could only shake her head, trying hard to suppress the coldness coiling in her gut.

"Well, well," Shinji's voice echoed at them from within the warehouse itself. "You came." They entered to see him sitting on a ledge of concrete above, his back to the five of them, holding his sheathed zanpakutō across his lap. He slowly rose to his feet without turning around. "More of you than I expected, really."

"We're here, Hirako," Ishida said from Rukia's left, and she noted that he'd left out the honorific. "What now?"

Shinji turned to face them, drumming his sheathed sword against his thigh. "Inoue Orihime, Sado Yasutora, Ishida Uryū," he counted off, nodding to each of them in turn. He paused as his gaze landed on Renji and Rukia. "_Shinigami_," he acknowledged them, giving them a nod and a bonus sardonic smile.

"We _have_ names, _gaki_," Renji practically spat, but Rukia waved him off. Shinji's sarcastic grin only grew wider and more bitter.

"_I'm_ a brat, now? Well, I suppose I deserve it, Abarai Renji-_fukutaichō_, never having given you cause to believe otherwise," he said. "But I digress. You're not here to talk about me, are you?"

He paused there, eyes distant, and though Rukia could tell that Renji was burning to say some more things, neither he nor anyone else spoke. "Your friend…Kurosaki Ichigo," Shinji began haltingly, and Rukia had to resist the urge to kick him in the kidneys until the story came out rather than endure this endless boiling anticipation, "…Is not dead…_yet_."

Orihime broke. "If you don't stop playing around with us, Shinji," she snapped, "I'm going to pick up on your face where I left off three hours ago." For the first time, Rukia noticed that Shinji was sporting a black eye and a split lip, and privately applauded Orihime's efforts.

"Well, geez," Shinji drawled, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand, "breaking this kind of news easy is pretty hard." Despite his apparently unconcerned expression, it seemed to Rukia that he was just as anxious as the rest of them, but obviously for different reasons. The cold, acid sensation in her stomach spread, and she clenched a fist until her fingernails dug into her palm. "I mean…" He sighed. "Had any of you noticed…well, _changes_ in your friend recently?"

—_you know you know you know what happened, Rukia_, jabbered an insistent voice in her head, and she shoved it down, hard. Orihime hesitantly volunteered, "I…well, he's been depressed lately, and…" She stopped, but the unfinished clause hung in the air, heavy and suggestive.

"He hasn't been fighting well lately," Renji muttered.

"He's been easily distracted," Chad said.

"He's been quieter," Ishida remarked, fiddling with his glasses as he was wont to do when nervous or evasive.

Rukia should have said something next, and she knew what she should say, but the secret that Byakuya had told her weeks ago as he recuperated in the Kuchiki mansion would not fight its way out of her mouth, would not, _could not_ be said. "He—" She tried to say something, anything, but the terrible suspicion that had flared across her brain like a comet was burning, burning her mind, and she refused to say it aloud, as if suggesting such a possibility might make it true.

_No._

_It couldn't be._

Shinji saw her mouth working, saw the awful comprehension dawn in her eyes, and nodded solemnly. "Ichigo probably didn't tell you this because he didn't want you to worry. When he regained his Soul Reaper power in Urahara Kisuke's _Shattered Shaft_, when he nearly _turned_ in order to find his strength, and save his soul—"

"No," the word flew from Rukia's mouth like a flutter of moths from an ancient wardrobe, "no…"

"—he became part Hollow."

It sounded like a bad joke—the silence following that sentence was like the silence of an audience waiting to hear the real punch line, not knowing the story was over. Rukia pressed her hands to her mouth—pressed _hard_, as if letting up meant allowing what she knew to spill out and corroborate his atrocious lie and make it true—

"Well, having a Hollow inside you isn't really, ah, _comfortable_ at best," Shinji continued, no trace of a smile on his face. "The thing grew, you know, grew every day, in proportion to his own strength. Once the symptoms start to appear, there's no going back. Ichigo thought he could fight it, thought he could protect you if you didn't know, thought he could keep going with his normal life if he just ignored it." Shinji stopped there, took a breath and blew it out through his teeth. "He thought wrong. So he came to us, finally."

"Who's 'us?'" Ishida interrupted.

Shinji shrugged. "Me and my associates. I know _you_ wouldn't have heard of us, but the _shinigami_ might have—we like to call ourselves the vizard. The Masked Army."

Rukia glanced over at Renji, who shrugged. The name didn't ring a bell.

Shinji looked faintly disappointed. "To make a long story short, we're a group of ex-Soul Reapers who, through a series of highly interesting and complicated events dating back about a hundred years ago, gained Hollow powers, in a manner somewhat similar to your friend's."

"So he thought you could help him," Chad said. Shinji nodded.

'Well, to be frank, _we_ thought we could help him. At first, he wanted nothing to do with us—better living through denial, eh? But he came around after that second Arrancar attack. Came to us and demanded we help him out. Kind of an asshole about it, too, to be honest, but I guess that was part of the kid's charm."

"And?" Renji blurted.

"And we helped him to confront his inner Hollow. And he lost."

There it was.

The truth.

Two words.

Even through the hand she had clamped over her mouth, a small moan escaped.

_He lost._

"…L-lost?" Ishida whispered, and the situation was made even more surreal—Ishida _never_ stuttered.

Shinji nodded again, thoroughly miserable. "He lost. We watched, helpless, as he was consumed. My god, it was terrible—Love almost lost an arm, and the _thing_, it just—"

"_Stop it_!" Orihime gasped, tears running down her cheeks, as she clamped her hands over her ears and fell to her knees, "_Stop it stop it stop it, you're sick, I won't hear this, you're wrong—_"

"Stop it?" Shinji said loudly, real fury trickling into his voice. "_Stop_ it? I _warned_ you! This is the truth! You won't _hear_ it? You won't hear how your friend, your _nakama_, sold his life, his _soul_, for the power to save _her_, to protect all of _you_? You won't hear how he held back a monster, _his_ monster, _every day_, from all of you—my _god_, when we finally coaxed it out, I couldn't even believe he had lasted that _long_ against the goddamn thing—by all rights, he should have turned _weeks ago_—he's _gone_, and _you won't __**hear**__ it_?" Shinji leapt down from his perch to the floor, striding forward with every word he spat. "You won't hear how he _screamed_? You won't hear how he _**bled?**_ You won't hear how he _**died**__**?**_ _THIS IS THE TRUTH!_"

Ishida and Chad stepped protectively in front of Orihime, but Shinji had already stopped walking. One hand was in his pocket, the other drummed his sword against his thigh as before. "You don't know," he continued softly. "You can't possibly know…what he went through. None of you could possibly understand what it was like." He looked up, looked each of them, barring Orihime (who was still on the floor), straight in the eye. "_None of you_."

There was only Orihime's broken sobbing to mar the silence then. "So…so Ichigo is…" Renji stammered.

"He escaped to Hueco Mundo—the Hollow he became, that is," Shinji told him, and the finality in his tone stabbed Rukia like an icicle to the gut. "Kurosaki Ichigo is as good as dead, Abarai. Your friend is _not_ coming back."

—_chapter one: end. _

_--_

(extended, actually coherent summary) Ichigo loses the fight to his inner hollow, and ends up in Hueco Mundo. His friends vow, against the wishes of the Soul Society, to pursue and rescue him, no matter what it takes. They receive help from the unlikeliest of places, but they're going to need all the help and luck they can get, for they're about to find out that Ichigo has changed beyond what they can even imagine…


	3. Inner Apocalypse

**Stained**

AU. It's black on white on black—bleached-blank memories and red-stained hunger. A coup d'état leads to a new twist in this tale: his story from the dark side of the moon. –post episode 124–

(extended, actually coherent summary) Ichigo loses the fight to his inner hollow, and ends up in Hueco Mundo. His friends vow, against the wishes of the Soul Society, to pursue and rescue him, no matter what it takes. They receive help from the unlikeliest of places, but they're going to need all the help and luck they can get, for they're about to find out that Ichigo has changed beyond what they can even imagine…

(a/n) I apologize for the late update—I would have had this up Tuesday night, but I was stranded on vacation with no wireless internet. Heh, my bad.

The next one could be late, too. And when September starts, updates will be slowed to once per month, as school with three advanced classes plus a set of night college courses and work will eat up my life until December. Remind me why I'm doing all of this…

* * *

**Chapter 2:  
****Inner Apocalypse**

"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"  
--Richard III, Act V, Scene V

_Love stood apart from the beast, one hand raised to eye level._

"_He's going all out?" Lisa asked, worry and sick dread spreading._

"_He's got no choice," Rose said._

_The Hollow's fingertips glowed with power—the charging _cero_ was pressurizing and growing more lethal by the second—and for an instant, time seemed to dilate. Lisa thought fiercely_, Now, now it's going to happen. Now the Hollow suddenly stops at the last second and Ichigo comes busting out, just like we all did, and we get on with our lives. Now the good guys win.

_She could almost _see_ it._

_That's what should have happened, and here—_

_Here was where the story rewrote itself._

_Here was where everything broke._

_Because the _cero_ lanced forth, and Love caught it on his mask, and the air suddenly got that much heavier from their combined _reiatsu_, and the Hollow that used to be Ichigo shrieked enough to cause the very walls of Hachi's barrier to waver and hairline cracks to form, and the last little fraction of its mask filled itself in—_

"_Oh my God," Lisa whispered. _

_Shinji's face tightened, just that little bit. _

"…_He's not coming back," he said. _

_Kensei had his mouth to the barrier, causing Hachi to wince even more as he shouted: "Love! Hang in there, I'm coming in!"_

_Hachi shook his head. "I can't open a hole in the barrier without weakening it too much. It's on the brink as it is."_

"_**What?**__"_

"_I've got it!" Love shouted, his voice slightly distorted from the effects of his mask. "I have to finish this!"_

_Hiyori bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. "Shit," she muttered, too quiet for the others to catch._

_The Hollow hissed, its burning eyes sweeping the area. It could sense the power of those it was up against, and it wasn't stupid. Fight or flight—there was no question. Love lunged at it, but it turned and slammed into Hachi's barrier with all of its weight. Hachi shouted in pain as the barrier collapsed. Before anyone else could draw a blade, a _Garganta_ opened and closed, leaving just eight behind._

_The Hollow that used to be a teenage boy, one who had almost single-handedly mounted an invasion of the Soul Society itself, who had had two little sisters that hadn't played with him in months, who had secretly liked Shakespeare, who had beaten up _yanki_ after school nearly every day just because he had stupid hair, who had opened juice boxes for his friend because she never quite learned how, who had laughed and cried and smiled sparingly and fought and loved and never gotten to kiss a girl other than his mother…was gone._

xxx

The world was no longer sideways, he noticed. It was remarkable that he was lucid enough to realize this, considering there was a sword sticking out of his gut.

It took forever for the newly established gravity to take hold of him, longer still for him to begin to fall towards the ground. The heavens were darkening above him, the clouds turning black, red-orange fire leaching into the blue of the sky, silhouetting perfectly the white shadow that stood atop the tallest spire. The Hollow that was within him—that was _part_ of him—was suddenly before him, reaching out and snatching the grip of the white sword that was stuck somewhere under his ribs, and _ohhh god he could feel it grating on something, it wasn't coming out_—the Hollow was holding him in the air solely by the blade that was lodged in his spine somewhere—

"A king deposed," it whispered in his ear, and though Ichigo could not see its face and expression, he could _hear_ its insane killing glee. "Do you hear that?" it continued, backing off a little and looking at a point above Ichigo's head. "It's the sound of your mind…_breaking_."

"_Sh—shut…_" Ichigo spat, but couldn't quite summon enough energy or air to finish the invective. He could feel his body slowly sliding off the end of the blade, the pain coming in black-white-red waves strong enough to make his vision waver.

The other just smiled wider, revealing teeth like shards of volcanic glass. "Do you see that?" it said, gesturing to the darkening skies, black smoke over bloody fire. "That…is madness itself." The Hollow grinned again, reached out, and pulled Ichigo closer by the hair with its other hand (the one not holding the sword).

"_Come, thick night!"_ it said, laughing at the sky—Oh God, it was quoting _Macbeth—"and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the __**wound**__ it makes—" _here it twisted the sword and Ichigo screamed, though he'd thought he had no screams left in him, twisted and yanked it out, trailing blood and some things he didn't recognize and didn't want to recognize—"_nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark—"_ here it stopped for another spasm of laughter as it let go to watch him fall— _"To cry, 'Hold! Hold!'"_

_Bastard_, Ichigo thought hazily, _that one was my favorite_, before he struck ground, struck water, descended into the blackness, and lost consciousness…perhaps for good.

...

_Memories flashed through the haze like fireflies, there at the edge of vision and gone before he could reach out to catch them._

...

Rain. Blood and water. A mother's hand. A father's smile. Cigarette smoke winding over a fresh gravestone, the acrid smell mixing with tears. Love and loss and love again. Little ones, little hands. A crybaby and a loner and their punk older brother. A family.

_. . . . . . (blood)_

_._

_._

_._

_..._A family, gone.

...

A high kick to the face, and a grin at the tears that followed. Slaps on the back when he needed them, or a kick to the butt when he needed one of those. Laughed often, laughed hard. That impish grin.

Migraine headaches. Bad Shield DVD marathons and ridiculous stories in between classes. Cram sessions before finals. The stupid Don Kanonji laugh.

Unreadable, but unavoidable. Texting each other on the roof when they didn't feel like opening their mouths to say anything. Sociopathic sympathy. The strange camaraderie of those that rarely smile for real.

Friends.

. . . . . ._(souls)_

Friends...gone.

...

_Memories, scenes, captured in images. Catching fire in the ensuing storm. Distorting. Twisting. Burning._

...

…_He was drowning quietly, black water filling his lungs and the blackness of oblivion dripping into his consciousness, obliterating everything it touched… _

.

.

.

Under the bridge. Cell phone. A promise, back to back. Mexico, not Okinawa. A strong arm, and a strong friend. That dumb parakeet. Silence more articulate than language. Strength.

Yasutora Sado...gone.

...

Glint of sunlight, reflecting off glasses. White against black. Hollow bait, scattered on the wind. Bleeding fingertips. Needle and thread, running red. A blue streak hitting home, one fewer threat. Pride.

Ishida Uryū...gone.

...

Hair almost as ridiculous as his own. Bad cooking. A brother's outrage, and a sister's grief. A really hard head. Six shielding flowers and healing light. Always a smile, never giving up. Faith.

Inoue Orihime...gone.

...

Tattoos. Those three shoulder wounds that never really healed. Red hair and a crooked grin. A star and a stray dog. One common goal. Oath sworn only to yourself. Loyalty.

Abarai Renji...gone.

...

...

_(hunger)_

_(need)_

...

A night. A Hollow attack. A sword. A name.

Rabbit drawings. Kidō. Juice boxes. Hiding in the closet, smuggling food, sneaking pajamas. Dumb arguments. Memories in the rain, and the rain left off. White tower. Sōkyōku. Bankai. Reunion. Redemption.

Kuchiki Rukia...

Gone.

...

…_Doors slam before the tempest, one by one by one. A few photographs, escaped from the blaze with but a few scorch marks, flutter into a room, flutter gently and brush up against limp fingers._

_The door slams._

_And the last sanctuary waits between breaths while the world around it burns…_

.

.

.

_(power) _

_._

A scowl. One who protects. All these faces, all these names. _Nakama_. Zangetsu. Dandelion head, carrot top, the Soul Reaper with orange hair carrying a sword as long as he is tall. Five humans and a cat. Shattered Shaft. Sees ghosts. Strawberry and the Soul Reapers. Guardian.

...

I. Me. Myself.

...

_self_

...

Kurosaki Ichigo.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

_. . . . . . .Gone._

—_chapter two: end._


	4. Two Women Are Burning

**Stained**

AU. It's black on white on black—bleached-blank memories and red-stained hunger. A coup d'état leads to a new twist in this tale: his story from the dark side of the moon. –post episode 124–

(extended, actually coherent summary) Ichigo loses the fight to his inner hollow, and ends up in Hueco Mundo. His friends vow, against the wishes of the Soul Society, to pursue and rescue him, no matter what it takes. They receive help from the unlikeliest of places, but they're going to need all the help and luck they can get, for they're about to find out that Ichigo has changed beyond what they can even imagine…

(a/n) A little later than I'd hoped, but here's chapter three! The preliminary character development out of the way soon, it's time for...the introduction of the plot! _(dun dun duuunnn)_

* * *

**Chapter 3:  
****Two Women Are Burning**

"A friend in need is a friend indeed."  
--English proverb

The vizard had debated all that afternoon about what to do. They informed Urahara, and with the help of one of his _gigai_, they staged a car accident. Ichigo's actual body was still alive, as he had left it to become a Soul Reaper. It was being kept fed and stable at Urahara's place; however, without a soul to animate it, it would likely die fully by the end of the week.

Besides Shinji, the rest of the vizard had already fled Karakura, knowing full well that the Soul Reapers would find them in no time if they stayed. Shinji had stayed to clean up any last little details and remove the evidence of the vizard having been there—"they're gonna kill me when they find out I told you guys. No offense or anything, you know, they just figured it would be a cleaner break if it was like he died. But I figured you deserved the truth," he said.

For Orihime, it was like dying twice. It wasn't enough that she had initially thought Ichigo dead, but to be given a hope that he was still alive, still okay, only to discover that the truth was worse than she could have imagined—_worse_ than him dying? It could have broken her. It nearly did.

She could not explain what had happened to her at the funeral—she had seen Shinji there and suddenly needed to…to _hurt_ someone—hurt _anyone_, really—and he had seemed as good a target as anything. Initially, Orihime had only meant to strike him once, to knock him off balance so that she could better shock the truth out of him when she demanded to know his role in Ichigo's death, but…

But when her fist hit home, there was a moment, a naked unguarded moment, when a sick sort of satisfaction rose up in knowing that _he was in pain_ and _she had caused it_—when she suddenly needed to _break_ for every time she had been broken, to make someone else _bleed_ as much as she was bleeding inside, to _be_ the person on the other end of the punches this time (a little light had flicked on, and she wondered later if that was why Ichigo and Chad seemed to like this so much)—

—and she couldn't stop.

She just couldn't stop.

It was a wonder that she managed not to break down like that again after Shinji finally told them the rest—true, she had collapsed and cried until Ishida managed to calm her down enough to walk home (he insisted on walking her home even though she lived about seven blocks out of his way), but at least she hadn't felt the need to break the mailboxes on their route back. Orihime was glad for that. Violence had never really been her thing, and the sudden flash of instability she had displayed scared her—made her think she might be losing it.

Orihime was now staring at a mirror, trying to spot creeping insanity on her face. It wasn't really working.

Maybe she _was_ going crazy.

It just…when she thought about it, it just made her truly feel powerless. She had done nothing for Ichigo—_could_ do nothing, she supposed—when all was said and done, he had protected her as long as he could, and now he was gone.

She realized, then—

Who had she ever protected in return?

Her brother.

Tatsuki.

Ichigo.

They had all protected her, and what did she have to show for it? Her brother was dead. Tatsuki had been injured and, being that she had no spiritual powers, could not be expected to stand up to the Hollow hordes. Ichigo…well, she didn't want to think about Ichigo right then.

Orihime knew.

She had protected no one. She was nothing but a burden.

Next to her hand on the bathroom sink lay a pair of scissors, extra-long and very sharp.

She raised the blades even with her face, gazing at the reflection of the lights in the stainless steel.

"I swear," she said, through clenched teeth, "I will never be a burden again."

_Snip._

xxx

Tatsuki went to school the following morning, thoroughly miserable, and got the biggest shock of her life.

Though she wasn't much of a girl to pay attention to hallway gossip, particularly not after the death of one of her best friends, several whispers of a troubling nature caught her ear: "Did'ja hear about Orihime?" "I heard Inoue totally lost it!" "Did you _see_ her?" "It was _awful_—did you see what she _did_ to herself?"

Tatsuki burst into homeroom, panting for breath and shouting Orihime's name, and pulled up in shock.

Orihime had cut her hair.

When you say it like that, it doesn't seem all so monumental, but Orihime had _cut her hair_. It was not even cut professionally—it was all hacked off at about chin length, and uneven.

Orihime saw Tatsuki and smiled widely. "Hi, Tatsuki!" she said, a bit too brightly and cheerily, given the situation. "Oh, yeah, this?" she asked, running a hand through her murdered locks. "I just...just wanted a change. That's all! There's no need to worry about me, Tatsuki-_chan_, I'm doing all right..."

Tatsuki could only blink and nod dumbly. Somewhere inside, she could hear _My long hair symbolizes my trust in Tatsuki_ and she could see Orihime, battered and broken and Ichigo, showing up at the last minute like the stupid hero-wannabe he was and she could still taste the tears she'd cried into her pillow last night after the funeral and she could still feel the bruising on her knuckles where she'd punched her wall until it hurt and screamed _Ichigo, you dumb dead shit_ until she couldn't scream for crying, but outside she couldn't hear or see or taste or feel, she could only walk to her seat in a haze and sit down and try not to look like the world was breaking and she hadn't gotten the memo.

_It's just hair, Tatsuki, for crying out loud_, she told herself.

Just to prove it, after class, she walked over to Orihime's seat. "Hey, '_hime-chan_?" she said, trying to smile and coming out with a sort of weak grimace.

Orihime looked up, smiling too widely in return, "Yeah?"

"Is…is, uh—you know, I'm here for you, right?" Tatsuki had to swallow hard here; she'd never needed to ask something like that before because it had always been implicit. "So…you can tell me…if everything's okay…with you…"

Orihime blinked, smiled again. "Of course! I'd tell my best friend Tatsuki if anything was wrong, _ne_?" She ran a hand through her hair again—the action seemed to have become unconscious, like a twitch.

"Y—yeah..." Tatsuki could feel something breaking inside, something hard like sorrow and sharp like betrayal. "Of course you would."

Orihime walked out, and Tatsuki could only sit and try not to feel like she'd lost two friends in two days.

_It's not a betrayal, Tatsuki._

"It's just hair," she whispered.

...

...Bullshit.

xxx

Orihime showed up at Ishida's house at eleven o' clock that night. "I can't sleep," she whispered when he opened the door in a bathrobe and slippers. "Do you have a couch I can sleep on?"

Ishida could feel himself blushing all the way down to his neck, and privately felt very grateful for the dark night. "Ah, well, yeah, I guess," he stammered. "My father's pulling a night shift at the hospital, so he won't be back until nine next morning. If, uh, if that's okay with...you." He blushed even harder.

Orihime smiled faintly. "Thanks, Ishida-_kun_," she said, and walked in. Ishida ran to get some blankets for the living room futon, but when he came back, she had already fallen asleep. Not ten minutes had gone by before the doorbell rang again.

Ishida opened the door to Chad, Renji and Rukia, the two _shinigami_ both in full _shihakusho_ and without their _gigai_. Orihime, having been awoken by the doorbell, groggily stumbled into the front hallway.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Oh, you're here, Orihime?" Rukia said. "Good, that saves us another trip. Get dressed, both of you, and meet us back out here in about five minutes."

"I don't think I even need to ask what this is about," Ishida said, a hard grin spreading across his face.

Renji smiled, his expression mimicking Ishida's own. Chad nodded.

"We're going after Ichigo."

—_chapter three: end._


End file.
